Do you know what Google knows about you?

Google has recently released its dashboard which lists some of the information associated with your Google account. It gave me a pretty good idea of what they knew about me, and reminded me of a few things. The dashboard can also be used to modify privacy settings for things you’d rather they didn’t know or store about you. Here’s what’s on my account:

Gmail – I don’t use gmail on my main google account heavily, but my main google account may be linked to other gmail accounts I do use
Alerts – the Google alerts I have are topics I’d like to be notified of frequently and thus are important to me
Calendar – Everything I’ve done since I started using their calendar. Rough frequency, duration, time and location of meetings
Contacts – Everyone I know, their phone numbers, email addresses and some physical addresses
Docs – Most of the documents and spreadsheets I’ve written in the last year and a half
Finance – The approximate value of my stock portfolio (correlates with net worth), as well as my positions on securities as well as when positions changed
iGoogle – Page is hit every time you start up your browsers, as well as topics that are most important to you
Profile – What I think people should know about me
Reader – Similar to alerts, but more content with slightly less importance, this include all of the articles you’ve read and could include how much time you spent reading each and what links were clicked
Talk – Any instant message conversations you have through gChat
Voice - Phone calls I’ve dialed, received, missed and ignored; call frequency; call duration; SMS messages; and possible transcription of recorded conversations
Web History – What I search for online, when I search, which links I click on, which ads I click on, the amount of time I spend on searched pages (if I return to the google search results page)
YouTube – What I’m watching and how long I watch

Other products which haven’t made it into the dashboard yet

Analytics – How much traffic websites I own get, what viewers look at on them, where they come from, where they leave to, how long they look at all of the content I put out there. Google Analytics also associates websites I own with me
Checkout – What I’m buying, where I’m buying it from, product descriptions and how much I am spending
App Engine – Any applications I’ve written
FeedBurner – Similar to Google Analytics for my RSS feeds
Base – Merchant side – what products I’m offering and which ones are most popular. Consumer side – what products I am looking for, and the approximate price range I am looking for them in
Groups – Groups I am interested in and what I have to say about those groups
Local Business Center – Everything about my local business
Page Creator – My homepage online
Webmaster Tools – Which content on my website I think is most important
Subscribed Links – The information I think people should seen when looking for me, my website or my business
Wave – Real time conversations I have
Website Optimizer – How much time I spend optimizing my website

It is shocking to get a look at how much Google knows not only about my online presence and habits, but to see how they are seeping into and mining data from my physical, offline presence. The Google Dashboard really makes me think about what information I share with them and whether I want to continue this relationship or not.

For me, Google’s services are so useful and convenient that there is no way I would ever ween myself off of them entirely. For now, I’ll stick to what I’m up to while closely monitoring my dashboard to see what pops up.